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Leonhard Euler

Publications and source records attributed to Leonhard Euler.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Euler's explorations of extremal ellipses

In the 1770s, Euler wrote a series of papers (E563, E691 and E692) about finding the ellipse with minimal area or perimeter in the family of all ellipses passing through a fixed set of points. This is a translation of all three papers from the original Latin, together with a commentary which discusses Euler's results and an appendix which addresses a question from E691 which Euler left for others to consider.

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On Amicable Numbers

This is an English translation of Euler's 1750 paper "De numeris amicabilibus" (E152), the most substantial of his three works with this name. In it, he expounds at great length the ad hoc methods he has developed to search for pairs of amicable numbers, concluding with a list of around 60 new pairs.

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On solids whose (entire) surface can be unfolded onto a plane

This is the English translation of Leonhard Euler's Latin paper "De solidis quorum superficiem in planum explicare licet". Euler explains several methods to obtain equations for developable surfaces. Therefore, this paper might be interesting for anyone studying the history of Differential Geometry.

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Observations on continued fractions

This is a translation of Euler's Latin paper "De fractionibus continuis observationes" into English. In this paper Euler describes his theory of continued fractions. He teaches, how to transform series into continued fractions, solves the Riccati-Differential equation by means of continued fractions and finds many other interesting formulas and results (e.g, the continued fraction for the quotient of two hypergeometric series usually attributed to Gauß)

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On divergent Series

This is the translation of Leonhard Euler's paper "De Seriebus divergentibus" written in Latin into English. Leonhard Euler defines and discusses divergent series. He is especially interested in the example $1!-2!+3!-\text{etc.}$ and uses different methods to sum it. He finds a value of about $0.59...$.

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On the sum of the series formed from the prime numbers where the prime numbers of the form $4n-1$ have a positive sign and those of the form $4n+1$ a negative sign

This is an English translation of the Latin original "De summa seriei ex numeris primis formatae ${1/3}-{1/5}+{1/7}+{1/11}-{1/13}-{1/17}+{1/19}+{1/23}-{1/29}+{1/31}-$ etc. ubi numeri primi formae $4n-1$ habent signum positivum formae autem $4n+1$ signum negativum" (1775). E596 in the Enestrom index. Let $χ$ be the nontrivial character modulo 4. Euler wants to know what $\sum_p χ(p)/p$ is, either an exact expression or an approximation. He looks for analogies to the harmonic series and the series of reciprocals of the primes. Another reason he is interested in this is that if this series has a finite value (which is does, the best approximation Euler gets is 0.3349816 in section 27) then there are infinitely many primes congruent to 1 mod 4 and infinitely many primes congruent to 3 mod 4. In section 15 Euler gives the Euler product for the L(chi,1). As a modern mathematical appendix appendix, I have written a proof following Davenport that the series $\sum_p \frac{χ(p)}{p}$ converges. This involves applications of summation by parts, and uses Chebyshev's estimate for the second Chebyshev function (summing the von Mangoldt function).

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Theoremata arithmetica nova methodo demonstrata

Euler presents a third proof of the Fermat theorem, the one that lets us call it the Euler-Fermat theorem. This seems to be the proof that Euler likes best. He also proves that the smallest power x^n that, when divided by a numer N, prime to x, and that leaves a remainder of 1, is equal to the number of parts of N that are prime to n, that is to say, the number of distinct aliquot parts of N. The translation is presnted from Euler's Latin original into German.

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Theorematum quorundam arithmeticorum demonstrationes

Euler proves that the sum of two 4th powers can't be a 4th power and that the difference of two distinct non-zero 4th powers can't be a 4th power and Fermat's theorem that the equation x(x+1)/2=y^4 can only be solved in integers if x=1 and the final theorem y^3+1=x^2 can only be solves for x=3 and y=2 in integers. The paper is translated from Euler's Latin original into German.

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De seriebus divergentibus

Euler gives a long introduction, giving all the arguments for and against the use of divergent series in calculus and then gives his own definition of the sum of a diverging series. Then in the second half of this paper he evaluates the the 1-1+2-6+24-120+720-... on several ways and gets the sum 0.5963473621372. The paper is translated from Euler's Latin original into German.

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An easy method for finding the integral of the formula $\int (x^{n+p} - 2 x^n\cosζ+ x^{n-p})/(x^{2n} - 2 x^n\cosθ+ 1) dx/x$ when the upper limit of integration is $x=1$ or $x=\infty$

This is a translation of an article presented by Leonhard Euler on 18 March 1776 (Opera Omnia I-XVIII, pp. 265-290) and of summaries for it by Siméon Denis Poisson in 1820 and by Heinrich Burkhardt in 1916. An appendix lists in modern notation interesting definite integrals and series which Euler, after using partial fractions to prove his main formula, obtained formally by allowing the parameters $n, p, zeta and theta$ to take particular, even pure imaginary, values : the Fourier cosine and two-sided Laplace transforms of the trigonometric and of the hyperbolic secant (also squared), and their partial fraction decomposition. The source archive provides, in Plain TeX, LaTeX and PDF formats, the corrected Latin text and a complete translation into French.

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Variae considerationes circa series hypergeometricas

Euler gives an asymptotic approximation for the function f(x) and recognizes that he is trying to interpolate the factorial function introduced in E19 "De progressionibus transcendentibus seu quarum termini generales algebraice dari nequeunt". The paper is translated from Euler's Latin original into German.

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